Perhaps it would be about right to say that little Whitie’s spasmodic announcements directed Pee-wee in his idle wanderings on that morning when he was fearful and sick at heart.
Long afterwards he remembered with interest that it was little Whitie Bungel (for whose recovery he had sacrificed two hundred and fifty dollars and not a little glory) who put him in the way of the terrible discovery that he made on that fateful day. And the funny thing about it was that the little gnome had given the clew to his benefactor and not his father who knew nothing about the frightful revelation of that morning until it was all over.
So perhaps there is a little god of good turns after all, who, all unseen, administers punches in the nose and pays back two hundred and fifty dollar gifts and so forth, and has the time of his life watching how these things work out. Or a “pay back sperrit” as Licorice Stick might have called him....
As Pee-wee approached the scene of the fire he saw in the bushes something which caught his eye. This was a torn fragment of clothing. The bushes were trampled down at the spot. It was not hard for the scout to follow this line of trampled brush which was so disordered that he thought it could not have been caused by a walking or fleeing person. It was well away from the area where the men had fought the flames.
Here and there something brown and sticky on the leaves caught the scout’s eye. Some one had crawled stealthily through here. Or else— dragged himself through. Pee-wee shuddered at this thought. He examined the trampled channel more carefully. And from this examination he was satisfied of one fact which made him uneasy, apprehensive.
The weight which had crushed the bush down had been a prone, dead weight. At intervals of perhaps three or four feet were gathered wounded strands of the tall grass, as if some groping hand had reached ahead, gathering and pulling on them. Pulling a helpless weight. Pee-wee knew this for he saw with the eyes of a scout.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE TRAIL’S END
This trampled channel petered out in a comparatively bare area across which was more brush. Almost hidden in this was a tumbled-down shack, hardly bigger than a closet, in which boys who had been wont to dive from the old bridge had donned their bathing suits. It had been thrown together as a storage place for fishing tackle and crab nets and these latter, rotten and gray with age, still hung in the dank, musty place.